Death Sentences in Soccer Violence Spark More Clashes in Egypt

By

Matt Bradley

Updated Jan. 26, 2013 4:42 p.m. ET

CAIRO—Dozens of people were killed as violence engulfed cities across Egypt for the second straight day Saturday, challenging Egypt's police and military to contain mounting lawlessness on a national scale.

At least 30 people were killed and more than 300 were injured in rioting in the coastal city of Port Said on Saturday after a Cairo court sentenced 21 people to death for their role in a deadly soccer riot last February.

Meanwhile, Friday's antigovernment riots in Cairo and other cities continued into early afternoon on Saturday, leaving at least 11 people dead, mostly in the impoverished coastal city of Suez.

Photos: Egypt Soccer Verdicts Spark Violence

Fans of al-Ahly club celebrated in Cairo, Saturday. Associated Press

The harsh verdict and back-to-back outbursts of violence have lent an air of desperation to Egyptian politics just as the country marked the second anniversary of a revolution that ended the 30-year rule of former President Hosni Mubarak and ushered in a two-year period of political instability.

The bloody street fights throughout the country often involve angry youth and have become a routine feature of Egypt's fraught transition to democracy.

ENLARGE

Egyptian soccer fans of Al-Ahly club celebrate in front of their club premises in Cairo on Saturday after a court sentenced 21 people to death in clashes last yera that killed 74 Al-Ahly fans.
Associated Press

But this latest flare-up comes amid profound political divisions, an imminent economic crisis and months ahead of expected parliamentary elections that threaten to accelerate the country's plunge into instability.

Previously

The weekend's rallies showed that many Egyptians continue to view the street-level protests and violence—not the ballot box—as the surest way to express their political will.

The general focus of rage is President Mohammed Morsi's Islamist government, who his secular opponents complain has brought little real change, particularly to a police force that remains incapable of containing mass demonstrations.

"When we call for the reform of the security sector and the security sector refuses this call, it leads to things like Port Said," said Khaled Fahmy, a political analyst and history professor at the American University in Cairo. "When we say that the security sector has to be reformed, this is exactly what we mean."

Adding to the political confusion as the death toll mounted, the National Salvation Front, the umbrella political group that represents opponents to Egypt's Islamist-backed presidency, issued a statement announcing that they would boycott the parliamentary vote unless Mr. Morsi devolved power to his opponents and amended the constitution.

In Port Said, hundreds of relatives and friends of the convicted defendants tried to breach prison walls to spring the convicts from jail.

The 21 people sentenced to death on Saturday were among 73 defendants, including several police officers, accused of participating in one of the world's deadliest soccer riots. Rulings for the rest of the defendants will be read on March 9. The verdict for the 21 announced Saturday isn't final—the defendants are almost certain to appeal and the head of Al Azhar, a government-managed Islamic university, must first accept or reject the capital sentences.

The head of Al Azhar has historically served a rubber-stamp religious role, and he is likely to approve the judge's decision.

Egyptian soccer hooligans, known here as Ultras, have been demonstrating in Cairo for the past week in anticipation of the court verdict over the alleged murder of 74 soccer fans during a stadium riot last February.

Ultras backing the Port Said-based Al Masry team rushed the pitch following their win over the Cairo-based Al Ahly team. The ensuing melee saw dozens of Al Ahly fans suffocate while trying to leave the stadium. Others were tossed from the bleachers or slashed with knives.

Ultras supporting Al Ahly dubbed the incident a massacre and blamed Egypt's police for the deaths. The soccer fans accused the ministry of interior of doing little to stop the violence as part of a decade-long vendetta between soccer hooligans and the police.

Others said police deliberately orchestrated the attack.

"They are to blame for derelection of duty and the murders happened under their watch," said Mahmoud Adel, a member of the Al Ahly fan club committee who was at the game last year. Mr. Adel said thousands of Al Ahly fans erputed into cheers and applause at the Al Ahly club in Cairo when the decision was read.

"It's a strong verdict, but what happened deserves an even stronger verdict," he said.

A Port Said resident and lawyer of one of the defendants given a death sentence said the verdict was nothing more than "a political decision to calm the public."

"There is nothing to say these people did anything and we don't understand what this verdict is based on," Mohammed al-Daw told the Associated Press. "Kids were taken from their homes for wearing green T-shirts," he said, referring to the Al Masry team color

The court's ruling in the Port Said case came a day after protesters descended on city squares across Egypt on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak's 30-year autocracy and to press their demands against Egypt's Islamist leadership.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its conservative Islamist allies have dominated every national vote since Mr. Mubarak stepped down. In statements this week, the Brotherhood championed Egypt's "glorious revolution" but warned of the "evil forces of darkness [who] desperately endeavor to spoil the celebration [by] spreading chaos and terror across the country."

In a statement on his official Twitter account, Mr. Morsi expressed his sympathy for the deaths of protesters and police officers in Suez and vowed to pursue those responsible.

In Egypt's capital, marchers converged Friday from across the city onto Tahrir Square, the nerve center of the 2011 revolution. Demonstrators chanted anti-Islamist slogans.

"This is not a memory or a memorial," said Sayyid Gouda, a 36-year-old accountant who was wearing a gas mask around his neck as he gazed out on the crowds on the square. "This is a new wave of the revolution to restore our country."

In condemning the Muslim Brotherhood, which exercises expansive control over Egypt's government, Mr. Gouda and other activists drew from the same lexicon of resistance that defined the uprising two years ago. President Morsi and his Brotherhood backers are "fascists" who should be imprisoned for trying to take over Egypt and turn it into an Islamist state, Mr. Gouda said.

Although many of the tens of thousands of demonstrators were peaceful, according to televised images of the protests, dozens of rock-throwing youth laid seige to the Brotherhood's headquarters in the Nile Delta cities of Ismailia and Damanhour on Friday, according to the state news agency.

The violence was still boiling in cities across the country on Saturday. Egypt's state news agency reported hundreds of unknown assailants attacking government facilities and Brotherhood offices.

In the coastal city of Suez, rioters stormed and looted a police station and shops and attacked a police administration building.

Friday's protests saw the first major appearance of a new group of masked protesters calling themselves the "Black Block," after a protest strategy historically associated with the violent European anarchist movement. Sporting black clothing and concealing black face-masks, members of the group were responsible for blocking a tramway in the coastal city of Alexandria to make way for protesters and clashed with police in front of the presidential palace in Cairo, state media said.

The apparently loosely affiliated new group swore on its unofficial Facebook page to shield antigovernment protesters from Brotherhood thugs.

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